[excerpted; see full article]
Haiti remains tense in the wake of Monday’s violent clashes between protesters and United Nations troops that left at least two dead and 16 wounded in Cap-Haitien, the country’s second largest city.The port city, approximately 300 kilometers north of the capital of Port-au-Prince, was still largely paralyzed on Tuesday, with schools, public offices and businesses shut, streets blocked by barricades of burning tires and sporadic gunfire reported. The bridge leading to the city’s airport was blocked with welded metal barriers.
Violence erupted on Monday after thousands of demonstrators took to the city’s streets to protest against the UN occupation force (known as MINUSTAH, for United Nations Stabilization Mission In Haiti), which many blame for the cholera epidemic that has now claimed more than 1,000 lives, and to denounce the government of Prime Minister Rene Preval for failing to adequately confront the spread of the disease..
Public health officials insist that it is difficult to determine with certainty how the bacteria was introduced into Haiti, which has not had any cases of cholera in a century.
Suspicions that the UN troops introduced the deadly disease into Haiti have inflamed underlying resentments of the so-called peacekeeping force, which was deployed in Haiti in the aftermath of the US-orchestrated coup that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and forced him into exile in 2004. Numbering some 12,000 troops, the Brazilian-led MINUSTAH is widely seen as an occupation force dedicated to suppressing popular unrest.
"The death toll will increase significantly, which will not be a surprise," said the UN official. Many believe that the government’s official count of cholera cases and deaths is a significant underestimate, with many infections and deaths, particularly in the more backward rural areas, going unreported.
The UN has estimated that as many as 200,000 Haitians could contract the disease over the next several months. Health experts have warned that, given the conditions* of extreme poverty and inadequate infrastructure in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, cholera will remain a problem for years to come.
"The situation is very alarming," according to Stephane Reynier, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders. "MSF structures are over overrun by the number of patients, not just in Port-au-Prince, but nationally.
Cholera, while highly contagious, is easily contained and easily cured under conditions in which there is ready access to clean water, sanitary facilities and medical care. For the vast majority of Haiti’s impoverished population, however, these conditions are out of reach.
In 2008, Partners in Health, a Boston-based NGO, together with other aid groups, issued a report entitled "The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti, which stated [in summary]:
"...a vicious cycle of contaminated water consumption, ineffective public hygiene, persistent health crises, and—beneath it all—chronic and deeply embedded poverty."
The report indicted the United States and the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton for sabotaging Inter-American Development Bank loans destined for the country’s water infrastructure and distribution systems. The Clinton administration sought to block the money as part of an effort to destabilize Haiti’s government and bring to power a regime more subservient to Washington’s interests in the region.
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re: "suspicions...introduced deadly disease"
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re: "suspicions...introduced deadly disease"
No cholera in Haiti for over a hundred years..until now...and those who should be able to explain it cannot. The best they can do is say that it is "difficult to determine with certainty how it was introduced". The Haitians have their own "suspicions" about where it came from though, that being something along the lines of 'ordo ab chao'.
Although cholera is "easily cured" according to this article, for various reasons offered it is another story in Haiti.
Poverty and bad water in Haiti is not a new situation though, as made clear in the 2008 report referenced in the above article. *But under the same terrible conditions where previously there has been no cholera for a century, now there is, and it cannot be stopped and "will remain a problem for years to come", says the UN. So how is that and where did that cholera come from anyway?
Taking over the world is a brutal business.
update 11-22-10
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Psalms 10:2 The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.
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Psalms 10:2 The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.
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